Tag Archives: boring

It all looks so sexy. Corporate jets. Dramatic moves. Microphones. When it’s a Cinderella story, it’s even better. It’s easy to romanticize leadership success. To imagine the stroke of genius, the well-timed leap of faith, sitting with the right guy on the plane. No one wants to hear the boring parts, but they’re there. Always.

“The real story is actually probably pretty boring, right? I mean, we just sat at our computers for six years and coded.”

~ Mark Zuckerberg

Sleepless nights figuring it out. Triple checking the deck for the big presentation. Revising the speech 18 times, and practicing 20. Slogging through. The great idea that nobody gets. And the next one and the next.

People reveal their boring once they’ve “made it.’ Then boring becomes an intriguing part of the story. Before that, it’s just, well, boring. Right now, your bosses boss is likely doing something way less cool than you imagine. It’s tedious, but it works. So she invests the time, day after day.

The gymnastics coach has watched her vault 400 times. It’s a yawner, but she’s got potential, so he critiques every move. Tomorrow’s Mark Zuckerberg is revising the code, again. And here you are ___________.